Things Will Get Worse for Facebook Before They Get Better. A Second Act Is Required. Our thesis is simple. User growth has slowed and in the recent June quarter declined. We expect this trend to continue in the near-term as the following factors negatively impact Facebook’s business. Declines in User Trust and Engagement: The Cambridge…

Disintermediation Defined Disintermediation is when one party inserts itself between an interested party and its customers (see below table of “disintermediators” and “disintermediatees”). Ironically, parties that suffer disintermediation often invite it upon themselves. Google Disintermediates Yelp and OpenTable For the past several years Yelp restaurant reviews appeared on Google business listings (this appears to have…

Content Is King Content is King to quote Sumner Redstone. At CEORater we spend a fair amount of time thinking about content. Over the past 24 months we have considered the following for our platform: 1.) video streaming of earnings calls with associated analytics 2.) employee video reviews 3.) business news (original and third-party) and…

Successful CEOs possess each of the attributes described below. This is an unscientific analysis based upon my prior experience covering and acquiring companies (equity research analyst; M&A executive) as well as my current role as founder of CEORater. It is important to recognize that while these attributes are qualitative in nature they do impact the…

We dipped into our CEORater database as we regularly do and ran a query to return the Technology stocks with the greatest stock price appreciation over the period January 3rd 2017 through February 23rd 2018.

We then took the Top 20 Technology Companies as measured by stock price appreciation during the period and asked the question: “Which of the 20 Technology CEOs were the best value in terms of CEO Compensation required to generate each percentage point of stock price appreciation?” For example, in the case of Mr. Dorsey at Square (tkr: SQ, Dorsey is also CEO at Twitter tkr: TWTR) who finished first on our list, for every $7 dollars of CEO Compensation the Company generated one percentage point of stock price appreciation.

Second on the list was Take-Two Interactive’s (tkr: TTWO) Strauss Zelnick at $183 of CEO Compensation for every percentage point of stock price appreciation generated. The table below details the Top 20 CEOs. Further, below the table each CEO name is linked to his/her CEORater profile page where additional detail may be found.

Bezos is Top Tech CEO with a Total Stock Return of 83,639%

We recently queried our CEORater database to identify the Top Technology CEOs as measured by stock price performance during each CEO’s tenure. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos topped our list by a wide margin. For purposes of this exercise it helped to have been a CEO for an extended period of time. It is also interesting to note that 8 of the Top 10 and 14 of the Top 20 CEOs on our list are Founder CEOs. We define “Founder” CEOs as those CEOs who were present for the first dollar of revenue earned. Additional detail may be found at CEORater.com. Contact sales@ceorater.com for Excel spreadsheet detail.

Top Technology CEOs based upon Total Stock Return (“TSR”) as measured during the CEO’s tenure. BP = stock price on CEO start date or IPO date (if not public on CEO start date). EP = stock price on Feb. 16th 2018. Contact sales@ceorater.com for additional detail.AMZN’s Jeff Bezos. Click on the image to expand.

Yes if You Ask Us While AT&T moving to acquire Time Warner and Disney (and Comcast?) moving to acquire Fox are interesting deals, it’s more interesting to us what the next chess move may be in a world that increasingly values content (live sports and premium original content in particular). We recently wrote about and…

No, we’re not referring to bit player Hulu – which Disney will own 60% of post Fox deal close. Rather, the media/technology landscape is not static. Apple plans to invest $1 billion in original content (TV and film). Amazon is a content juggernaut and will have invested approximately $5 billion in video content during calendar year 2017 (Netflix approximately $6 billion over the same period, $8 billion in 2018). Facebook announced a deal with the NFL in September 2017 to stream game highlights and is reportedly looking to hire executives to secure the rights to additional live sports-related content. Could TV and film be far behind for Facebook? You may have noticed that Google is pushing its YouTube subscription service if you’ve watched a YouTube video lately. However, we haven’t heard rumblings of YouTube looking to become aggressive in acquiring third-party content or investing in original content. Video content libraries are grist for the mill for these content giants. Every independent video content provider and content library (i.e. movie & TV studios) is “in-play.”

A combined Disney/Fox OTT service and Netflix are the clear OTT content leaders. However, when the dust settles we suspect that both Disney/Fox and Netflix will be acquired by some combination of Apple, Amazon and Facebook. Apple and Disney have a relationship and therefore we would favor Apple as the likely Disney acquirer. It is unclear if Apple would initiate takeover talks with Disney or if Tim Cook is a counter-puncher and would wait for another company to move first on Disney before making an approach. Our view is that Apple, Amazon or Facebook could potentially move on Disney as soon as the Fox deal closes or nears close. Disney negotiations with Apple or any potential suitor would likely put Netflix in play. This time around it may be more difficult for Reed Hastings to resist.

AT&T Ought to Be Allowed to Acquire Time Warner “As Is” AT&T (T) ought to be allowed to acquire Time Warner (TWX) “as is” (earlier today AT&T extended the deal close deadline to April 22 2018). It is puzzling why the Justice Department would push back on the deal. We recently covered the topic in…